“We wanted to make something that sounded completely new… When I’m singing and it’s us playing, it’s always going to sound like Franz Ferdinand but we wanted to sound like something Franz Ferdinand had never done before.”

‘Always Ascending’ flexes the kind of disco-pop Franz Ferdinand have done so well in the past but blossoms out over five minutes into Bowie-soaked space-rock and just makes sense in a world where LCD Soundsystem are active once again.

Franz Ferdinand's fifth LP follows on from 2013’s Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action and 2015's surprise collaborative album with Sparks, FFS. (“A surprise even for the label, they didn’t even know we were working on it.”).

Written in Scotland and recorded in London at the start of April, Kapranos and co. then settled in Paris with Philippe Zdar, a “super-cool guy; great character” who is one half of French duo Cassius and producer to fellow Gallic all-stars Phoenix and Justice, but he’s also notoriously hard to pin down.

“I knew Philippe a few years ago, we’d spoken to each other and he was recording the Beastie Boys at that time. You’re right, he was hard to track down,” confirms Kapranos. “The guys from the label [said] ‘we can’t find him anywhere, he doesn’t answer his emails, might be in Ibiza, Paris’. I remembered I still had his phone number so just sent him a text… he texted right back and said ‘yeah, c’mon, let’s get going’.”

“We talked about how the most important thing is how you feel when you listen to the music, emotionally, and how you respond… we really bonded over that, as something that triggers your emotions rather than something you think about too much.”

The record will send the band off on a world tour from December. No Aussie shows yet but fingers crossed we'll get to witness the new look line-up (newcomers Julian Corrie and Dino Bardot joining original members Alex Kaparnos, Bob Hardy and Paul Thomson. Co-founder Nick McCarthy split in 2016).

Always Ascending is out 9 February via Domino Records. Artwork and tracklist below.